One of Sydney’s most crucial health services for disadvantaged and homeless citizens is facing closure within months after the 2015 Federal budget.
The Haymarket Foundation and its iconic Haymarket Foundation Clinic have been providing accessible health care to those in need for almost 40 years. The foundation supports homeless and disadvantaged Australians – many of whom are unable to access mainstream medical help – in getting and staying healthy in the face of adverse circumstances.
The clinic provides crisis accommodation, medical and psychological care, support for substance-addicted Australians and rehabilitation services. It even provides services as basic to health as a free, safe shower for the homeless.
The medical and health practitioners at the clinic assist up to 90 people every day. The clinic’s focus on preventative medicine results in an estimated saving of almost a million dollars each year for the mainstream health system.
It manages to run its entire service at a cost lower than that which it saves the public health system, meaning its existence creates a net benefit for the country and the economy.
“Our healthcare system is predicated on people following up on problems themselves. But probably a third of the people who come here don’t have a Medicare card – a lot of people come herebecause it’s really hard to manage their health needs,” the foundation’s CEO Mat Flynn told Fairfax Media.
“They might present with issues like a boil or a cyst, but the nurses can look at the holistic picture, about vaccinating them for hepatitis or diagnosing their diabetes or hypertension.”
But despite these benefits, the foundation may have to close its doors completely as early as July of this year. Why? Because in Tuesday night’s federal budget, the foundation lost the majority of its funding.
The government will continue to fund some drug and alcohol support services, but the small amount of funding allocated for this means that the clinic itself will not be able to remain open, meaning those drug and alcohol support services will have nowhere to operate out of.
The clinic will close its doors after June 30 – the date its funding will stop – unless it can find financial support elsewhere.
Flyn said the clinic’s aim in the short term is to remain open for a month following the June 30 cut-off date.
“The Board is trying to push on for at least a month,” he told Fairfax Media.
“We have got a nursing unit managerwho has been here for 20 years, doctors who have been here for 20 years, and they have got a high level of expertise and skills working with these clients, and that would be one of the biggest shames, if that expertise was lost.”
In response to Tuesday night’s budget cuts, Flyn has launched a change.org petition asking Health Minister Sussan Ley to restore the much-needed funding.
“If the funding for the clinic is not reinstated it will close and many of its current patients will not access mainstream services. The fear is that there will be many homeless and disadvantaged people whose health will deteriorate,” he said.
“The Haymarket Foundation has provided primary health care, and welfare services to the homeless and disadvantaged for the last 39 years.”
As Women’s Agenda reported earlier this year, women are among those at the highest risk of homelessness – especially older women, who find themselves facing housing crises as the result of a lifetime of inequality, employment instability and financial uncertainty.
According to Housing for the Aged, approximately 70% of those seeking its services are women, most of whom are living in poverty following a relationship breakdown.
“Instead of accumulating wealth through the retirement income system as intended, due to experiences of inequality over the lifecycle, women are more likely to be accumulating poverty,” a 2009 Human Rights Commission report on gender-based poverty read.
For many of these women, homelessness becomes the final struggle in a long story of inequalities. For these women, services that provide crisis accommodation and health care are crucial. Why is the government destroying them?